Repertoire has a winner with historic Yardbirds recordings!

 THE YARDBIRDS

Live In France

(Repertoire Records U.K.)

VENUE: Palais des Sports, June 20th, 1965; Music Hall De France, June 27th, 1966; Grand Spectacle de Jeunes, April 30th, 1967; Bouton Rouge TV show studio, March 9th, 1968. 

SOUND QUALITY: Damn good mono recordings, really, considering the 50+ year vintage of these performances. While there’s a little distortion here and there, the odd drop-out, and some echo, overall the CD provides an enjoyable listening experience with clear vocals and separation of instruments. Kudos to ‘Eroc the Engineer’, whoever that is, for a fine job in digitally remastering these performances for release.  

COVER: Gatefold digipak with plastic tray; perfunctory photoshopped front cover photo with track listing and a smaller live concert photo on the back. Impressive 16pp booklet with plenty of rare color photos and informative liner notes, including quotes from original band members Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty, written by noted British music historian and critic Chris Welch.

TRACKLIST: 

1. For Your Love • 2. I Wish You Would (both 1965) • 3. Train Kept A-Rollin’ • 4. Shapes of Things • 5. Over, Under, Sideways, Down (all 1966) • 6. Shapes of Things • 7. Train Kept A-Rollin’ • 8. You’re A Better Man Than I • 9. Heart Full of Soul • 10. My Baby • 11. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine) • 12. Over, Under, Sideways, Down (all 1967) • 13. Train Kept A-Rollin’ • 14. Dazed and Confused • 15. Goodnight Sweet Josephine (all 1968) 

COMMENTS: Although they enjoyed only modest chart success in the U.K. and, belatedly, in the U.S. the Yardbirds were often overshadowed at the time by fellow British Invaders like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Formed in London in 1963, the original band line-up included singer Keith Relf, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and drummer Jim McCarty. The teen-aged Top Topham was the band’s original lead guitarist but, being too young to tour, he was replaced by the up-and-coming talent Eric Clapton. This was the line-up that recorded the ‘Birds initial single releases, with Clapton leaving in 1965 after the release of “For Your Love” to pursue a ‘purer’ blues sound with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Clapton was involved in the recording of the band’s 1964 debut, Five Live Yardbirds and, after his departure, he was replaced by an equally-talented guitar-slinger in Jeff Beck, fresh from British R&B band the Tridents. Beck would hang around for a little over a year, recruiting his friend Jimmy Page – then an in-demand session player – to join the band and eventually take his place as the band’s lead guitarist. The latest Yardbirds release by U.K. label Repertoire Records, Live In France, documents several appearances by the blues-rockers on French TV and radio in their post-Clapton era. The CD is a great representation of the band circa 1965-68 with solid performances, and serves to compliment numerous BBC radio/TV and British concerts previously released by Repertoire.  

Two tracks circa June 1965 come from a concert at the Palais des Sport where the band opened for the Beatles and feature “For Your Love” and “I Wish You Would.” The former was actually the band’s third single and their first U.K. Top Ten hit (#3), the latter song was their 1964 debut single. Both performances are lively, energetic, and sound much better than they have any right to (antiquated recording technology and all that). Derived from a French radio broadcast on Europe 1, this line-up of the band included Beck, but it’s frontman Keith Relf that shines with spirited vocal performances and raging harp-play.

Jump forward a year to 1966 and the ‘Birds dropped by the studio on June 27th, 1966 to record songs for the French TV show Music Hall De France. With Beck still in tow and Page replacing Samwell-Smith on bass, the band knocks out three rave-ups on film to be broadcast weeks later. The sound is a slight bit hollower here than on the previously-mentioned radio broadcast, the performances likely derived from the old film reels. The band kicks out the jams, though, beginning with the old blues chestnut “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” which offers plenty of McCarty’s enthusiastic timekeeping, blasts of hurricane-force harmonica, and subtle guitarplay between Beck and Dreja. 

“Shapes of Things” was another Top Ten U.K. hit (#3) for the band, and the audience raucously applauds the song which features Relf’s strong vocals, subtle fretwork, and some explosive mortar-fire drumbeats hovering atop Page’s understated bass lines. “Over, Under, Sideways, Down,” with its familiar Beck circular guitar riff, was another bona fide U.K. hit and here the band revs up the engine and hot rods through the song in slightly more than two minutes, leaving a stunned audience in its wake.

An April 1967 appearance at the Grande Spectacle de Jeunes near Paris comprises the heart of Live In France. Representing nearly half of the CD’s 15 songs, the liner notes are a little oblique about the source of these seven recordings. The Yardbirds played on Saturday afternoon on a bill that included American R&B great Percy Sledge and a number of unnamed French singers. The concert was evidently filmed (a couple of director’s names are mentioned in the album’s credits) but no info is offered about potential TV broadcast. There are a few video clips of these performances readily available online, however.   

The band stomps and hammers these seven performances with their usual aplomb. Beck is gone at this point, rhythm guitarist Dreja moved over to bass, and Page is the band’s lone six-stringer. There’s some duplication in songs from previous shows, with energetic performances of “Shapes of Things,” “Over, Under, Sideways, Down,” and “Train Kept A-Rollin’” (which features even more maniac harmonica riffing by Relf than the ’66 take!) before we get to the meat of the meal. “You’re A Better Man Than I,” the B-side to the band’s “Shapes of Things” 45rpm flapjack, is musically complex with subtle rhythmic patterns, Relf’s vocal gymnastics, and elegant shading by Page (along with a wiry mid-song solo that presages Zeppelins to come…). 

The band immediately rips into “Heart Full of Soul,” riding on the back of Page’s monster riff. The song was two-years-old by this time, a former Top Ten U.K. hit (#2), but the band sounds as enthusiastic in its performance here as they did when the song was riding high. Switching gears, Relf turns on his love light with a soulful reading of the R&B gem “My Baby” before tackling Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).” Lots of singers have taken on the Dylan songbook, but by quickening the pace and interjecting even raspier harmonica blasts than the original, with the band providing a warm rhythmic soundtrack beneath Relf’s voice, the Yardbirds makes the song their own. 

Sound quality for these 1967 tracks is good, impressive really, with slight distortion at times and an overall buzzy brightness, with Relf’s voice riding high in the mix. The last three songs here date from March 1968, filmed for the French TV show Baton Rouge and the studio sound is astounding. “Train Kept A-Rollin’” makes its third appearance on Live In France, and it’s just as rollicking and ramshackle here as previous, the band coming dangerously close to jumping off the tracks with unrelenting rhythms and steely harmonica reminiscent of Deford Bailey (look him up). Adapted and/or inspired from American singer/songwriter Jake Holmes’ acoustic song “I’m Confused” (or so the lawsuit claimed), “Dazed and Confused” makes one of its earliest appearances here, Page first taking bow to guitar in the creation of haunting, otherworldly sounds. 

Clocking in at five-minutes-plus, “Dazed and Confused” is probably as heavy as the Yardbirds ever got, and if McCarty isn’t quite the skin-shredder than John Bonham was, it’s still an impressively progressive musical performance for 1968 (and it foreshadows much of Zep’s swingin’ ‘70s…). The set closes out with a wildly contrasting “Goodnight Sweet Josephine” which, curiously was the band’s final U.S. single release. Engaging and lively, musically, with skronky guitar licks and heavy drumbeats and cymbal-bashing, the song plays like a mix of British dancehall and (futuristic) hard rock. Needless to say, it went over stateside like a lead…well, it peaked at #127 on the U.S. charts and pretty much stamped “paid” to the band’s career, the Yardbirds splintering into different bands by the end of the year.

As talented as they were, the Yardbirds may have remained an obscure rock ‘n’ roll footnote if not for the monster commercial success enjoyed by Page’s Led Zeppelin (a/k/a ‘The New Yardbirds’), which caused many a 1970s-era teenager to search for old Yardbirds sides. I’d wager that more Yardbirds albums were released stateside in the 1970s than during the previous decade, and the band’s status as rock ‘n’ roll innovators has only grown in the decades since. In the new millennium, the band has become a veritable cottage industry with a wealth of live recordings and compilation LPs of various quality released. Live In France is one of the better late-model Yardbirds releases, featuring decent sound and a slate of dynamic live performances that display the full range of the band’s enormous talents and groundbreaking sound. Grade: A (Rev. Keith A. Gordon) 

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